


they say their wanderings are dangerous

by hotmesslewis



Category: Historical RPF, Lewis and Clark
Genre: Dancing, I Don't Even Know If There Need To Be Any More Tags?, I've forgotten how to tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-10 10:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14735000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotmesslewis/pseuds/hotmesslewis
Summary: Peter Cruzatte works some magic, and Lewis and Clark dance.





	they say their wanderings are dangerous

George Gibson was a competent enough fiddle-player, but there was something divinely inspired in the way that Peter Cruzatte played.

It was odd, thought Meriwether Lewis, that so unstudied a musician should have such raw talent.  Gibson could, of course, produce a pleasant tune when drawing the bow across the strings of his much-abused violin, but when Cruzatte played it almost felt as though he and his instrument merely served as a channel for the music that came from elsewhere, from some supernatural, holy place, perhaps from heaven or perhaps, as Lewis thought was more likely, from the earth itself, this new Eden surrounding the Corps of Discovery.

Either way, it was widely agreed that the one-eyed, gruff Frenchman well deserved the nickname “St. Peter” when he cradled his fiddle under his chin and performed a sprightly air or a somber melody.

The weather held itself particularly mild this winter evening at the fort near the Mandan villages, and the men felt like celebrating their good fortune.  Cruzatte and Gibson held their instruments and dueled for the pleasure of their brothers in arms, Gibson half-heartedly in recognition of his opponent’s superior skill, before they relented with smiles and begin their duets, songs the men could dance to.  The men always seemed reluctant to dance at first, merely clapping their hands or tapping their feet to the beat of the paired fiddles, but the fine construction of rhythm and melody flowing from Cruzatte’s violin routinely proved fatal to even the highest reserve (save that of Meriwether Lewis), and the men stood, danced with a forgotten, instinctive joy to the music: George Shannon with a shy sway, George Drouillard with all of the passion of his native land, York stomping with wild abandon.

But it truly did surprise Lewis when William Clark, his redheaded co-captain, rose to his feet on this night and leapt around the blazing fire with the other men of the expedition.

Lewis knew that Clark danced—didn’t all men, be they gentlemen or savages—but he never realized that Clark danced so well.  He had seen Clark dance with women before, countless times, slowly, gingerly, his large frame seeming out of place on the ballroom floor, seeming to treat his fair partners with too much tenderness, losing grace to ungainly cautiousness.  But perhaps he had just seen Clark with the wrong eyes, or perhaps Clark truly was a better dancer under the stars, by the fire, in the dirt instead of on the floors of polished wood, for tonight Clark seemed to command the attention of all the men in the elegance of his every movement, or perhaps Lewis was too lost in the movement of his lover’s body to know that the other men existed.  Lewis took a private, intense pleasure in the sight that his eyes devoured, the fluid motion of muscles, the bright flash of a smile as Clark spun with the music.  Meriwether Lewis knew what that body felt like.  He knew the patterns of the muscles, precisely how those muscles felt in tautness and in complete relaxation and in the moment of glory between the two.  He had been in that body, and that body had been in him.  There was a supreme satisfaction in this knowledge of possession.

When the song was spent the men clapped, and congratulated their captain with broad smiles on his unexpected performance.  The captains usually did not, were not supposed to, not allowed to act as the men did, always aloof in their roles as authorities.  By dancing, Clark had become one of the men for a moment: camaraderie.

Lewis was jealous of the smiles and the laugh Clark offered to their men.

But then Gibson set down his fiddle and Cruzatte gave birth to a melody that Lewis knew, though he couldn’t call the name to his mind, a slower, sadder song that he knew well, a beautiful dance for partners.

How could the men not be shy to ask other men to dance with them to a song like this, a song clearly meant for lovers?  But they weren’t, the Fields brothers cheerfully pairing together, John Ordway offering Drouillard a smile and his hand, Hugh McNeil grinning to Alexander Willard’s invitation.  Lewis looked up into Clark’s outstretched hand, his firelight smile, his soft eyes.

“Dance with me, Captain Lewis.”

Even in the red glow of the fire Lewis knew the dark flush on his neck would be noticeable.  All the worse, as every man in around the fire and the music watched their captains, waiting, hoping that Lewis would relent, hoping their colder, angrier, younger captain would prove he had some tenderness in his soul.

“Captain Clark, I cannot.”

Sighs of disappointment were barely suppressed, though some men were allowed the indulgence of a smile of self-satisfaction in the correctness of their prediction, that the brown-haired, cold-hearted captain would not dance for them, with them.

Clark let himself get fresh, even a little bit flirtatious.  He chuckled again, this time for Lewis and Lewis alone, though a wider audience heard him.  Realizing the men would not yet ready to dance until this small drama of the captains had played out, Cruzatte abandoned the song itself, improvising around the tune.

“Meriwether Lewis, you _can_ dance, and don’t try to deny it.  I’ve seen you whirling across the ballroom floor countless times with some fair-haired maiden in your arms.  Will you not dance with me simply because I don’t wear pink satin or perfume or have flowers in my hair?”  The teasing was gentle but true; the men felt comfortable laughing softly at the image Clark offered for their amusement, contemplating the large man in the satin and lace of a young belle’s dress.

Lewis smiled out of obligation.  His mind fixed on the words: _will you not dance with me_.  Not so long ago, Clark had used the word “dance” as a soft euphemism for their secret lovemaking, and the memory of it still burned as hot in Lewis’s mind as the word felt on Clark’s tongue.  That same night Clark acknowledged the truth of his passion, his lust with the vulgarity, and Lewis inadvertently bared his heart with a single word.

Loving. 

Fucking. 

_Dancing._

Could they all mean the same thing?  Or were the ideas somehow inherently different?  Lewis couldn’t be sure, and he could not decipher the look in Clark’s eyes by the light of the fire.

“It has been ages since I’ve danced, Billy.”

“Ages?”  Clark scoffed, addressed the men watching them in rapt attention, as though they could sense the tension between the two partners even if they did not consciously recognize it.  “When he says ‘ages,’ he means a grand total of five months.  I happen to know that he attended several balls and danced with several young women when he stayed in St. Louis, before out departure.  Hell, I saw him at a few of the dances, myself.”

Merely five months?  It had been a _lifetime_ since Meriwether Lewis had danced.  The graceless, silent, red-faced young romancer who repeatedly stepped on dress hems or stumbled into other couples while fumbling his way through a waltz was dead.  Since then he had learned to love, and that he could find love in the arms of a man.  Surely dancing would be, could not help but be different now.  Maybe some of Clark’s elegance would, could not help but rub off on him. 

Surely their bodies were that well matched.

To dance with William Clark.

“Dance with me, Meriwether?”

He did not need the urgings, the anonymous calls of the men to convince him.

“Why not, Billy?”

The men clapped. 

The music began properly. 

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark danced, a leaping, lively country dance for lovers.

Exhibitionism.  Love on display.  For the first time Lewis understood the appeal of dancing. He still lacked the grace, the elegance of movement of the accomplished dancer, of even his tall red-haired partner, but for what he lacked in technique he more than compensated with in spirit.  To be able to touch his lover so openly, so tenderly, so publically.  Why had he even denied the impulse to dance with Clark at all, when it gave him this opportunity to touch Clark, to place his hands all over Clark’s body, and with so many people watching?  When it gave Clark the excuse to touch him?  Hands meeting as they skipped across the fire towards each other, and then it was not merely hands meeting, but hands on arms, rubbing across chests, arms around waists and fingers caressing hips, knowing that the truth of the caress would be lost to the witnesses as the captains turned and laughed with the other dancers.  For the briefest moment their bodies pressed together fully: Lewis surprised in a step he had forgotten but with fingers knotted through Clark’s, Clark’s palm spread fully on his back and Lewis would impossibly swear that even through the leather of his coat he could feel Clark’s sweat, and chests pushed together and thighs rubbing against each other as the lovers, the dancers moved in time to the music that was lost in the sensation of touch and Lewis was glad to find, to feel that he was not the only one so aroused by their clandestine stroking, their movement in that moment, but, Lord, how could he not kiss Clark with their faces, their eyes, their lips so close?  But he didn’t, and they were apart again, fingers still knotted but arms outstretched, outspread, and they laughed together for the simple reason that it was impossible for them not to laugh.

Finally Cruzatte’s song ended, and Lewis laughed and blushed in the embarrassment of his happiness as Clark spun him in one last time.  The suddenly shy young captain used this as an excuse to bury his dark head on Clark’s shoulder, catching his breath and hiding his face as the larger man pulled him in closer in the appearance of a brotherly embrace.  But Clark’s hand was lower on Lewis’s back than it should have been with any rights, slipping down onto Lewis’s ass and holding the accident firmly for a moment.  Lewis resisted the urge to wrap a leg around Clark but, comfortable in the knowledge that his face was well and naturally hidden, placed a kiss like a mosquito bite on Clark’s neck and let his laughter bubble onto Clark’s collar before raising his face to the crowd around them and bashfully beaming at his men.

The men clapped and whistled and yelled for the captains, for all of the dancers.  But the cheering was just for the captains, just for the dancers, never for the lovers.  Lewis wondered if they could honestly see it as merely a dance, when it felt so obvious to him that every part of Clark’s and his own body cried out for each other.  So much tension and heat between them, and it felt to Lewis like the air around them was roiling and boiling like the Missouri in a storm. 

Could the other men really be so blind? 

Or did they simply choose to ignore?

For themselves, or for their captains? 

To preserve their own comfortable knowledge, or the dignity of their leaders?

Lewis held onto Clark’s hand like an anchor as Clark raised their arms in acknowledgement to the cheering body of the Corps, and then both men swept into a low bow like performers, offering clever smiles to each other without a word.  Another raise, another bow, and they fled to the side of the fire where they collapsed into laughter of complete delight in the dirt and closed their eyes to the starlight, the fire, the soulful beginning of another of Cruzatte’s musical offerings. 

Still Clark held to Lewis’s hand.


End file.
